Joshua and Cheryl have been offering up their own personal sets of HeartRacers~HeartBreakers for each race. The moments that stirred them for whatever reason will fall in the HeartRacers category, and anything that makes them wince, cry, or throw stuff will be HeartBreakers. All cawsnjaws readers are invited to add on their own to share with everyone.

Today’s race at Chicagoland started off calmly enough. For the first 50 laps there wasn’t even a lead change, happily enough for the Jeff Burton fans. By lap 160 all 43 cars are still running. But we are certain that once the race was over, message boards everywhere lit up with bright flames, and in at least one location in this country a Kenseth fan is doing serious bodily harm to a Gordon follower.

HeartRacers:

  • Prior to today’s race, it was announced that Juan Pablo Montoya will defect from Formula One racing to NASCAR in 2007, to drive for Chip Ganassi. We are sure that no matter where his three cars finished (just for the record, Sorenson’s No. 41 was in 7th; Stremme’s No. 40 was in 22nd; and Mears’ No. 42 was in 25th) Ganassi was probably in a pretty good mood today.
  • Yeehaw! Someone finally sang a tremendous rendition of our nation’s anthem this season. Kudos to Diana GiGarmo for a respectful yet thrilling performance.
  • Jeff Burton started on the pole for the fourth time in his career, and the second time this season.
  • Bobby Labonte fans surely enjoyed watching their favorite driver, once again, tooling around near the front of a race. After getting shuffled to mid-pack, Labonte rallies to wind up with a 12th-place finish.
  • Robby Gordon fans must have enjoyed seeing their driver avoid mechanical problems and bad luck today, and wind up with a top twenty finish.
  • As mentioned before, Chip Ganassi had things to smile about today, not the least of which was Reed Sorenson’s first top-10 finish of his career.
  • In a post-race interview, Dale Earnhardt Jr. expressed his pleasure at being able to contend this season, and have finishes like today (in fifth place), after a terrible season last year.
  • Whatever the circumstances, Jeff Gordon found himself in Victory Lane at a track he wasn’t a winner at before, and finds himself in the coveted top 10 in points. He made no bones about the fact that he is racing to win.

HeartBreakers

  • Prior to the race, it poured forth from many media sources that Jeremy Mayfield is a tad unhappy with how things are going at Evernham Motorsports. We don’t think Jeremy was any happier at the end of this race, with his 24th-place finish.
  • After his Busch series win the day before, we don’t think Casey Mears found his 25th-place finish very fulfilling.
  • With all that has transpired this week for him, Robert Yates had to heave a sigh today, with Elliott Sadler finishing 29th, and Dale Jarrett 31st. When it rains, it pours.
  • The Wood brothers, a legendary family of owners in NASCAR, and their driver, Ken Schrader, could only be happy that they weren’t dead last. (Right. They were 42nd).
  • It must be rough to be the only driver who went out with engine failure. Fans of ‘Texas Terry’, not to mention Terry Labonte himself, had to be quite disappointed.
  • Our final HeartBreaker? Anyone reading this has to know what it is. That’s right. Matt Kenseth, and the spin that will be discussed, debated, and violently fought over for the next while. And the subsequent running out of fuel and wrecking across the finish line, that had to be some pretty sour icing on a lousy racing cake. No matter how it happened, it had to be awful for Kenseth and his fans.